RACE DAY - THE SWIM

This is it.  November 30th - IRONMAN COZUMEL 2014 RACE DAY

I wake up to my alarm, 3:15am. Although it is not like I was able to sleep with all the nerves and emotions running through my body.  I make my granola with almond milk and bananas.  It is delicious.  I take my time enjoying my breakfast.  I don't normally do this, I usually just eat and get on with my day, but today, I enjoy it while listening to the waves crashing on the shore.  It was just what I needed to get me centered for the day.  I washed my face, brushed my teeth and changed into my tri shorts and sports bra -- taped up both knees in gorgeous hot pink tape -- and got comfy in my sweats, tee and Ragnar hoodie. It will still be quite chilly since it is so early.  I back up my bag and head down to the ice machines to load up my water bottles.  Upon my return, I get my food ready for the bike.  This entails tons of PB&J sandwiches.  Yes my dears, that is right.  My PB&Js are coming with me.  I make about 3 sandwiches for the ride, keep in mind I have another 2 in my special needs bag.  But I do also have my Fiber Fruit One Bars, Peanut butter pretzels and Powerbar gummy.  I am all set!

I make my way downstairs to meet up with Dad, Marc & Christy.  Everyone is bright eyed and ready to go!  It is awesome. We sit an enjoy some breakfast. I just chill and have some OJ while they enjoy the breakkie. Then the shuttle arrives.  4:45... and arrives at T1 at 5:00am.  Holy moly it's about to get real! :-) 

There are buses upon buses and the energy is buzzing.  I am super excited and super scared.  I know deep down I am ready for this and that I will become an Ironman, but what if I DON'T finish?  I have trained mentally for a year and physically for 6months!  Can I do this? What if I let everyone down? I let myself down? I went down that rabbit hole for a couple of minutes before my inner unicorn turned that attitude right around into pure excitement and nervousness, but for the anticipation, not towards the negativity. I walked with Dad, Marc & Christy as far as I could.  We said our good byes, good lucks, I may have teared up a little, like I was never going to see them again or as if I was going off to kindergarten for the first time, but I used that energy to get me jazzed up.  This was it.  It was about 1hr 30min before the race was going to start. I was ready!

 

I checked in at my bike.  Dropped my water bottles, pumped my tires, gave her a little love tap and kiss, changed into my skin suit then dropped my swim bag made my way to the shuttle to take me to the swim start. By now, I am flying solo.  No Dad, Marc or Christy. No fellow racers that I know, just me alone in my thoughts, making my way to the shuttle.  It is amazing the most random of thoughts that go through your head and how quickly they fly by.  Like, I wonder how many times I will pee on the swim? I hope I find my bike quickly when I get out of the swim. I hope I don't have to use that Imodium today, that would suck. -- it really is quite the conversation with myself. :-)  On the shuttle, I make a few friends, not one that really sticks with me, just some friendly conversations.

 

We get dropped off at the swim start and it is amazing how relaxed the whole place it. I was expecting a bunch of people buzzing around in a ball of nerves like little worker bees, but nope, just a few people stretching, some photos being taken and the heats beginning to group up. 

 

Before I make my way down to the water, I pop into the port-o-potty for one last visit.  It was a successful visit and I am a happy camper, until, I can't get out!  That is right my dears, I am locked in the port-o-potty, struggling to get the door open, I literally almost start to panic as that is probably one of my worst nightmares that and if it were to tip over!!! Could you imagine!?!?  Anyway, back to me being locked in... the door would not open. I have no idea why, nada ... then finally, by the grace of god, it opens!  The entire line of people are staring at me. I am mortified... and make a quick joke --  something along the lines like "be careful of that one!" then I got the hell out of there!  sooooooo embarrassing.

 

Once at the water, I see Stephen, he is in yellow cap, the first wave to go. I give him a huge hug and good luck and off he goes.  I also see Guneet and Neil separately, which really is amazing considering this event has 2500 people!  It was meant to be.  Hugs and Good Lucks all around and then we disband to get into our own mental space.  Here we go!! Wave one, Wave two, the waves keep going, I think were are wave 4  --  we get cattle called into the water.  Thankfully in my training at both Vineman and Silverman, we had in water starts, so I was ready for this.  I had those clear goggles on, despite the difficulties in the pool and the day before, I was confident in them that they would be great and would be beyond awesome for the beauty that lies below for the next 2.4mi.  My heart is now beating like crazy.  We are in have about 30seconds until the horn blows.  I calm myself down and remind myself that I have done this swim many times before and that I totally have this. Now it is time to sit back and enjoy the ride.  One quick little prayer to mom and powers at be and HOOOOOOOOOOOORN!!!   Boom.. we take off like! (I'm in a purple cap -- somewhere in the abyss below) (pictures from Ironman)

 

 

 

 

This swim is gorgeous.  WOW. Erick was right and for a few brief moments I was so happy I had the clear goggles over my tinted ones. But then it happens. Probably about 10min in, if I am lucky, the damn goggles!! I scream at myself and say I knew I should have switched them! Damn it!!! (I even had them in my bag at T1! --dumb!) They weren't working in practice, the pool or even yesterday.  What the hell would make me think that they would work today?? I am furious with myself.  I have to stop and fix them multiple times and all I keep thinking is that I am losing time.. the swim and the bike are my strengths - if I don't do well on the first two, I am screwed on the run. This is not helping me.  I am probably 1/2 mi in the swim and fighting with myself is not going to get me anywhere. I quickly remind myself and pull it together. I continue to swim on, stopping every 50 or so strokes to fix my goggles, screaming internally at myself.  The frustrating part is, it was only the left side, which is the buoy side.  The worst part of it all, was that I would be in a rhythm swimming and to stop to fix the goggles threw me off and I lost momentum. That being said, after about 1mi or so, losing what must have been a solid 5 min, I just started to swim one eye open.  I would swim only breathing out of my right side and when I had to breath out of the left, I would close my left eye to breath so the water that was in that side of the goggle would go in my eye.  This was awful.  It worked for a while until I made myself a little seas sick. So I had to stop again, empty the water from that side of the goggles, tighten them up a bit and then really just hope for the best as that was the last time I was stopping.  So for the remainder of the swim, the water continued to get in my goggles, but my eyes just adjusted to it. I think it is because our eyes tear salt water, they were used to the salt water by now? I have no idea, but that is what I am telling myself. I zoned out and swam on. At one point, I see what I thought was the final triangle buoy and turn on the engines and haul ass... only to learn after a couple of buoy markers that it was not the turn around buoy.  So I am slightly tired because I burned my engines too soon, but then I realize I am doing pretty well, despite the goggle situation and burning out my engines. I noticed I am passing multiple people with yellow swim caps among others... I am swimming past dudes in the first wave?!?!  What? That is crazy... that being said at the same time, dudes with black caps that were the wave behind us are flying pass me and others with no regards that we are there.  I mean seriously torpedoing over us.  They are 6ft tall and just machines.  It's very impressive, to be honest.  With this, I am deep in the zone, the mindless zone of just swimming, I actually forgot I was in a race for a little while. I seriously was just enjoying the view below, the fish, noticing the current was moving in opposite directions at times, mediating through my breathing and in perfect Zen.  That is until I look up to sight and almost hit a lifeguard on a surfboard telling us we are at the turn around.  What?!?!  That was quick, I say to myself.  Then I turn on the engines again, pass that amazing "Never, Never, Never Give Up" sign below -  get super pumped and head for the stairs... 2.4 Ironman Ocean Swim is DONE!!!! 

 

As I get out of the water, the excitement is literally bubbling out of me.  I am in this and ready to crush it.  I knew I did pretty decent on the swim...  I just hoped I hit my A-Goal of 1:18.  And all of the sudden as I am running down the lane I see Dad, Marc & Christy! Right there, front row!  It was awesome! 

 

WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!  One down Two to go!!!

 

CRUSHED MY SWIM GOAL: 1:14:02

 

 

 

 

 





Ironman Eve

It's the day before my first Ironman and I am overloaded with excitement and nerves,

Stephen and I were set to take our mopeds to T1 for a practice swim, it was finally it open and safe for us to experience the water. 

So, here we go, right... well... sorta. :-)

I woke up that morning and had breakfast and of course it was good, after all, I trekked my cereal and almond milk all the way from Los Angeles.  Anyway, hee hee, I hopped on my moped and met Stephen at his hotel.  When I arrived, he was slightly frustrated as his moped was basically doing what mine was doing the day before.  Turning on and stopping for no reason. We figured it may need gas, despite the fact that the gage said it had half a tank.  As we made our way to the gas station, Stephen's moped completely died. It was awful.  So I went a head to get gas for mine and bring some back for him.  After trying to navigate the city, I finally found a gas station.  I filled her up and then filled up a water bottle of gas for Stephen.  When I get back to where he was suppose to be, he was gone?  Was I really that lost, I thought to myself? Nah... so I head back to the gas station and see Stephen is there.  (He was able to get his running.) As I make the U-turn from across the street, my moped goes bonkers.  I try to slow down and break but the damn think won't work and the moped takes off. I go crashing into the other end of the gas station parking lot and flip completely over the handles and land flat on my bike.  They moped stops.  I am in shock and as I look up to see a few very nice Mexican gentlemen try to help me up and Stephen. It was so scary. With that, Stephen and I decide to take these death traps right back to the store and take a taxi to swim practice.  Holy Sh#t, I really thought I was done. My dreams to become an Ironman were over because of a faulty moped! SCARY!!!

The picture below does not give the massive bruise on my knee and leg justice. 

 

After we drop the mopeds off, we immediately jump in a taxi and haul it over to the swim start where we quickly change and learn that they are closing the swim in 20min!  WHAT!?!?   With that, we jump in the water.  My goggles immediately start to leak, like they were doing in the pool.  But I fixed them, so I thought. After all, the water was so clear I wanted to see it all! 

  

As we are swimming and splashing around, I notice on the bottom of the ocean the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life "Never, Never, Never Give Up." I mean seriously, how cool is that?  How can you NOT get pumped after seeing that and it is at the bottom of the ocean!! That is how clear it was.  Unreal!!  Reality was definitely check in.

 

This is really happening we say to each other. Tomorrow we will become each become an Ironman! As that settles in, we wrap up the swim and head back into town.  We still have quite the day ahead of us.  We still had to drop our bikes and special needs off at T1 and our run and special needs at T2 and I had to get back to meet Dad, Marc & Christy, my IronCheerers.

So the taxi drops off Stephen and then me.  I head up to my room to pack and repack and repack again each bag.  I have to tell you, it is really quite funny. I only took this one pic.  Why I did not take a pic of my bike, bike special needs, and run, I do not know.  The below pic is my run special needs.  I have everything and anything you can imagine. Extra sneakers, socks, visor, sunblock, Vaseline, snacks, medicine, garbage bag, glow stick, the list goes on and on.  And I was never a girl scout! LOL... but you damn well better believe I was prepared!

After multiple efforts, I take a break and head down to the lobby. Marc, Dad & Christy should be arriving anytime and so should Stephen to take the shuttle from my hotel to T1 for the bike drop off.

Sure enough, there they are.  The IronCheerers have arrived! I am so excited they are here. It means soooo much to me.  We get them settled in and head upstairs.  Marc and Christy of course are laughing at me because of all my supplies.  I finalize my last bag and realize that I have not attached the power of the unicorn to my bike! Meredith from my TNT team is a true sweetheart and supporter.  She is the unicorn and happy thoughts and support from here and the TNT team beam through this unicorn and I am so happy it is with me. Thankfully, Marc was able to help me out and secure it to my bike. With that, O am now all set and can head to T1 to drop of my bike.  --- and Yes... I am starting to freak out a little in pure excitement.  

 



The shuttle bus arrives and it is just that a bus.  No racks for our bikes or spaces to put our bags.  Everyone and everything is going ON the bus. So one by one, we pile in.  I share the two seats with all my bags and flip my bike long-ways on its rear wheel... we all do.  Marc and Christy squeeze into a row and Dad takes the back row with a few athletes. I can tell that this is definitely not dad's idea of a good time, LOL.  It is extremely hot, humid and crowded. But he is a trooper and had a smile on his face the whole time, taking it all in.

When we get to T1 - my heart is beating.  This is really happening.  Now I know I have said this many, many times, that I am sure you all are like, "we get it, its a big deal" ... but I will continue to say it because holy crap, I am about to race in an IRONMAN competition!??  WHAT! Seriously, who decides that since they are over worked that taking on an Ironman is the thing to do!?!?    LOL.  Crazy pants. -- anyway... back to it.  Marc, Dad and Christy have to wait on the street as only athletes are allowed in.  So Stephen and I head in and drop our stuff, make our final adjustments, kiss our bikes goodbye and head back to the shuttle to drop off our run stuff. THIS IS AWESOME.

 

 

One down, one to go.  We hop on the shuttle and make our way to the back of the bus and settle in for the ride to T2.  We end up sitting to this cool guy, Neil.  He an Indian British dude and very chill.  This is his first Ironman as well.  We are both super excited.  He was talking that he would be finishing in the 14hr-15hr window.  I told him that I was hoping for 15, but I think the reality would be 16.  But as long as I finish, I was going to be happy.  He agreed.  Of course the IronCheerers joked and said they hoped for the earlier time!  :-)

 

 

Once we got to T2, we filed off the bus and headed to drop our gear.  Marc, Dad & Christy headed to the most Mexican restaurant they could find for something to eat, so of course they settled on Margaritaville.  Neil, Stephen and I dropped our stuff.  This was way quicker and easier than the bike drop off.

 

 After we drop everything off, we say goodbye to Neil and walk across the street to meet Dad, Marc & Christy.  Poor things are so hungry.  We get some snacks and a few drinks.  I enjoy a lovely bottle of water, while my they enjoy tasty adult beverages.  I am so jealous. :-) But after a short while, we head back to the hotel and to change and chill before dinner and then bedtime! 

 

 

 

Dinner was set for 6:30 at a local Italian place - Guido's.  I knew I was going to want some chicken and some carbohydrates!  Of course, I pop in to check in on dad and shockingly, he is ready to go and also shockingly, he has a ridiculous room!! Living room and all. It is nuts. My room has two beds, but it is nothing compared to dad's.  Marc & Christy's though is worse than mine.  They are on the street side in what seems like the back of the hotel, LOL.  And the only reason I know this is because we are waiting for them for dinner, calling, etc.. so we go up to check on them and the sillies took a nap!  It is pitch black in their room.  It was quite funny to watch them resurface.

 

Anyway.... they pull it together and we head into town.  Guido's is amazing!! We get some flat chibatta bread that is to die for and a few pasta dishes.  Dad ops for the fish, which, why wouldn't you??! Cozumel is known for its diving and seafood.  Everything was so amazing and yummy.  It was PERFECT!

 

After dinner, we say goodnight and good luck to Stephen.  I am not sure I will see him in the morning.  The four of us head back to the hotel.  I am not quite ready to go to bed yet and of course neither are they.  After all it is only about 8:30 or so. So Dad makes a quick call to Susanne and Marc & Christy get a drink and I run upstairs to get my tattoos -- after all I still need to get body marked.  And of course, since this was my first Ironman, I am going to at least look the part! :-). After Christy braids my hair, perfectly, I might add, I "smartly" ask her to put on my tattoos. It didn't go so well.  5-3-7. Not too hard - right? -- Well...................  My left arm, Christy nailed the 5, then took a 2 times to do the 3 as she did put it on backwards, before finishing up with the 7. LOL.. So after a few tries, my left arm looks amazing.  Which is at least the good arm to show as that is the street side.  My right arm, however, not so much.  The 5 & 7 are the perfect tattoo while the 3 had to be added on with permanent marker since we ran out of 3s. Too funny!  I wish I took a picture. I really don't know why I don't have one. -- apologies!

 

So with that and a few laughs, I have to go to bed.  I will be up at 3:00 / 3:30 to eat change and get mentally prepped.  The shuttle leaves starting at 4:00... I try to convince the IronCheerer's to do the same, but they are not quite ready to call it.  Which I know will make for a slightly harder wake up for them, but I know that they will be fine.

 

Night Night!! Oh boy!

RACE WEEK!! OH-MY-GOD! IT’S HERE!

Ok.. so I am freaking out.. and I mean A LOT.

I know that I am ready. But it is still so surreal that it is here. I mean I signed up for this a year ago.  So mentally I have been prepping for a year while loosely physically training for the first 4 months and then kicking into gear crazy time after Marc’s wedding.. Mid-April / May I was in it.  I cannot believe how time flies.

Monday of this week i squeezed in my last PT session.  This time we threw in a little acupuncture. Why Not, right?!?!  Any little bit can help. I also had to time check my swim.  2500yards. 300 warm up easy… clock 1000 60sec break clock the next 1000 then 200 cool down easy.  No problem. 50 min total!  18:30 for the 1^st 1000 and 19:07 for the second with crazy annoying goggle issues and earache issues. I will take it!

Tuesday was bananas.  I still am not feeling well overall and now I think I have a slight earache from the swim on Monday.  Work is CRA-CRA, especially since I am out of the office for the next week for the race and I had to haul it to get to the Orthopedist... hoping and praying he would give me another cortisone shot for my knee.   At this point, I need all the help I can get and the last shot I felt like it really didn't do too much. That being said, my knee was also super-duper inflamed that I probably only reduced the outer swelling and wasn't able to get into the actual swelling.   Anyway, he checked me out, test after test and concluded it needed another shot. THANK GOODNESS. And this one, to be honest, I felt go in, so hopefully I will work.

That being said it was 5:45 by the time I was done.  I still had to pack and the thought of going to the gym to do a Swim-Bike brick was not in the cards on many levels, one – timing, two – earache from the night before & 3- still somewhat sick. I feel like I am still fighting that cold/flu, I have that overall yucky run down feel.  So I popped a few me DayQuil and EmergenceC and opted out of it.  The last thing I want is to get worse and then be on a plane. UGH.  So I spent Tuesday night packing and freaking out and packing and repacking and freaking out.  I texted Lilias and Steph to make sure I wasn’t insane with all that I was packing and then called my family to check in and probably have them calm me down. :-)

Wednesday.  Travel Day.  I was able to book this flight, thankfully, with all my miles from traveling for work. So I am in first class on US Air/AA for this journey.  It  makes all the difference, especially since I had to check two bags. One is a hodgepodge of thing, clothes for the week, bathing suit, post-race clothes, etc.. and who knows what else, LOL. The other bag is my Tri-life.  Food, extra clothes, celebratory champagne from Tina, and of course my Snorkeling gear.  After all, they do say that Cozumel is the best place for diving and snorkeling.  The other bags I have are my “sanity” bags.  My Tri bag as all my race gear – no food- but my helmet, bike shoes and clips, sneakers, watch, socks, tri kit and speed suit, etc.  I originally had it in the food bag, but then of course I freaked out wondering what I would do if my bag was lost, so I repacked! LOL. And my other backpack is my laptop, book, pillow, all in all good travel bag.

The flights so far have been pretty great. My first flight to Phoenix was only 1hr, so it was breezy and I slept.  This second flight is about 4hour and has been great.  There is a guy sitting in the row behind me, Guneet,  who is doing to the race as well. This will be his 7^th race!  Crazy. Guneet, the super nice guy that he is, offered me to jump in his private car to the ferry.  Thank heavens as I had no clue how i was going to get there.

Now, do you want to know what is hysterical!?! See the difference between a veteran Ironman and a newbie! Me with my FOUR bags and Guneet with ONE medium size suitcase and a briefcase.  So funny!

We arrived at the ferry at 8:20pm, missing the boat by 20min.  Ugh.. The next one wasn't until 10pm.  So Guneet and I grabbed dinner and waited. It was delicious!

That being said, it was not delicious the 30-45 min later coming back up.

That is right.  The ferry ride over to Cozumel from Cancun was horrendous.  The wave were so rocky and choppy the boat was rocking so hard, I thought it would tip over. I thought I could handle it, but I was a million percent wrong.  I tired to run upstairs to get outside and I was denied.  No one was allowed outside because of the rough waters, so luckily, I was able to get to a bathroom at the back of the boat where I spent the next 35min throwing up.  It was awful. You would have thought I was hit up by the exorcist.  It was not pretty.

Thank god we landed and I got my land legs back.

Thursday -- Happy Thanksgiving!  I woke up super early and was super excited. I am so close to this race I can taste it. So I spent the morning checking out the town, getting a little lost and soaking it all in.  I went to the expo Ironman expo to pick up my BIB number and bag and to check out the store.  So much fun stuff in there, but I didn't want to jinx my race, so I only bought a Ironman Cozumel Mug and a longsleeve shirt with the M-Dot on the back with everyone's name on it, including mine!!

After the expo, I met up with Stephen and Guneet to pick up our bikes at TriBike and chatted about doing our training ride.  The plan was to meet up in about 1hr, but out of no where, I got extremely light headed and nauseous on the bike ride back to my hotel to drop off my stuff.  I think it was remnants from the ferry ride or i was dehydrated or hungry. I have no idea.  All I know is that that i was NOT in a good place.  So I texted the boys and bailed on the training ride and I forced myself to nap for a couple of hours and then I went out for a 30min run.  That felt good.  No knee pain. It was great.  That night, I had a very chill dinner and went to bed.

Friday, was a busy day.  Stephen and I wok up know that our swim start would be canceled.  The storms that rocked the ferry so hard and had me puking everywhere was still lingering and the rip tides and waves were so bad the swim was canceled. 

But that did not stop Stephen and I. Instead, we rented mopeds to check out the bike course.  First stop was Chakannab - T1.  We were able to see the set up of the bikes and where our Swim/Bike bags were and where my bike was going to be set up.  It was super cool and exciting.

 Rack for my Bike Bag for out of the swim

 Bike Spot!! 

After the tour of T1 -- we headed out on the mopeds to do the bike course.  The beauty of this course is indescribable and the pictures will not do it justice.  I cannot begin to tell you how amazing it is.

But what I didn't expect to see was how windy it really was.  Everyone has said that the course was windy, but holy moly,... it was WINDY!!!  So, the scary thing was it took us 2hrs to do the bike course on a moped going at 35mph.. .. how long was it going to take me on a bike?? 

After the ride, we made our way to the athlete meeting.  It was pretty cool.  There were a few athletes there that had done 20-30 Ironman races and one guy he, this IM Cozume race would be his 182 race!! It's crazy and what else is crazy is 3/4 of the room also was first time Ironman athletes. Kinda cool! 

 

After the initial meeting, I head up tot the front to reintroduce myself to Mike Lovato.  He WON Ironman Cozumel and is currently coaching my friend Lilia for IMAZ.  He is awesome.  As I say hello, he reminds me that he already knows me.... "Party Rachel" (Vs Burning Rachel, another friend that Lil has... not that she is boring or that I am a party animal, but I think I have a little more personality than her, so when Lil and I first became friends, it was a way for her to distinguish between the two). Needless to say, it was great to get a little last minute advice from him.  He joked and said he will make sure to say my name when I crossed the line.  I interned joked back and said, if you are still awake! I will be towards the end, given my bum knee, I know I will finish but it will be into he 15th/16th hour.  -- he quickly said, doesn't matter your time. If you finish under 17:00 you are an Ironman - don't forget that and don't forget to have fun.  GREAT ADVICE!!

 

Good Luck Video from my nieces and nephews.